The Oxygen Tank
by Lizzy Rebel
Summary: Breathe in [season 3 finale spoilers, Charliecentric, oneshot]


**Disclaimer:** nothing, do I own

**Teaser:** Breathe in (or a character study seven minutes before someone dies)

**Author's Notes:** Season 3 depresses me way too much. Let's go back to Season 1, ya'all!

* * *

Because Liam said he couldn't, Charlie climbs the tree. 

It's the only day of the month that isn't gray, the English air actually smelling fresh and warm and like Spring. There's a large, oak tree just outside the church that Liam Pace climbed only three days ago in the drizzle, touching the tips of the highest branches and crowing like a champion.

And Charlie thinks he can do it, too. Liam argues that and he sets out to prove him wrong.

He almost makes it. He really does. He is perfectly controlled, perfectly in shape, perfectly young enough to get a thrill from pulling himself higher and higher. From the ground the tree didn't look so big and he grasps branches, the muscles in his young arms straining, and he pulls and wheezes and lifts.

It's like he's spiraling into the sky, higher and higher and higher and every time he manages to lift himself up, the tree grows just another inch.

And suddenly, it snaps. The branch is gone from under his foot and his scream is swallowed up by the air as he tumbles back down, clutching at leafs and bark as he falls down and down and down…

Charlie can barely feel the ground as it crashes against his back and he cannot move or scream or cry from the shock of the pain.

He lies there, unable to breathe in, gasping on the ground like a fish taken from the water.

--&--

The water clotted like blood around Charlie's legs. His back hit the door hard and he braced himself against pain unimaginable as beating, unforgiving water closed around him.

Daftly, shaking just a little from panic, he wrote. He couldn't be sure why—and, now, he will never be sure why—but it felt like it was important that he tell Desmond, tell him about Penelope and the ship and everything the man had hoped for.

Water closed around his waist going higher and higher. Fear and desperation tightened in his chest as he forced his fingers to scrawl the words across his palm. He needed to do this. He _needed_ to do _this_.

But—_oh God! oh God!_—he didn't want to die. _Please God no_.

_I don't want_—

--&--

The first thing Charlie becomes aware of is the sound of a woman crying. His head hurts from his fall and he opens his eyes dizzily, wondering what the commotion is all about.

It's his mother, looking down at him, fat tears raining down her face as she touches his. And she's praying that prayer that she says when she's particularly worried or nervous or frightened. Charlie remembers her saying it when Aunt Angie went into early labor last year.

"Hail Mary," she whispers, stroking the side of his face with one hand, the other gripping a rosary. "Full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners… now and out the hour of our death…"

Besides Charlie is Liam, clutching Charlie's hand. It should hurt, Charlie knows, because Liam's knuckles and fingers are white. But he can't feel it.

He breathes in one long gulp of air and darkness swallows him again.

--&--

With a determination that would have been beyond Charlie no more than two months ago, he pushed all thoughts of death behind him. Hadn't Desmond said that this would get Claire—everyone—off the island?

Wasn't that enough?

The water closed around his throat and Charlie felt the salty sting of it on his lips. He lifted his chin higher, the tips of his shoes barely touching the floor now. His heart thumped loudly against his chest, as if it couldn't wait to jump out and join the water.

His Sharpie slid from his grasp just as he finished the last 'T'. For a moment he simply absorbed the odd feeling of triumph that washed over him. It felt like he was accomplishing something, it felt like—more than anything—he was _escaping_ something.

It felt like, for the first time in his life, he had done something right. That he had succeeded at something when he normally would have tripped and fallen on his face.

Strangely, just before the water closed over his head, he remembered when he had been nine he had tried to climb a huge tree outside of his old church, a sort of dare from Liam. He hadn't made it to the top then; he had fallen, and even though something great had come from that tumble he had always wondered what would have happened if he _had_ made it.

Charlie turned to face Desmond, staring in horror from the porthole, and realized that if he had made it to the top of that old oak tree, it would have felt like _this_.

--&--

A broken leg and bed rest sounds like purgatory for a nine-year-old. And a month without the use of his leg sounds like eternity. So Charlie predictably pouts in his room and raises hell whenever he can.

Because what else is he going to do?

It's his father who buys it. And even though it's a selfish act—his father just wants some peace and quiet—Charlie will remember forever the moment when the wooden, acoustic guitar is handed down to him as Liam watches from the kitchen table.

And two days later, he's still playing.

He strums his fingertips along the cords, smiling just a little. He barely knows the G cord from the E, but holding the guitar, toying with the taut strings, feels like going home.

Humming a little, he brings his fingers across the cords. "Hail Mary," he sings, comfortable enough to put the words he has memorized since he was old enough to remember into song. "Full of grace…"

From the threshold, Liam watches as Charlie awkwardly learns what sounds good and what doesn't on his brand new guitar, and his listens as his brother's soft, young voice fills his small room.

That is the moment when Liam breathes in for the first time, saying, "We're going to be rock stars."

--&--

Charlie pushed away from the door, leaving Desmond and the rest of the world behind. His lungs felt like they were burning up, being eaten alive by flames.

Was it ironic that he had always been careful around water before because the one way he didn't want to die was by drowning? Maybe. Charlie couldn't think straight anymore. There was too much pressure at the sides of his face.

He didn't have much energy left, he could feel it going out of him, as if they had been threads he had been grasping and now someone was pulling them away.

It took all his might to lift his arms, but he didn't want to go into the dark with nothing. He needed to cling to one belief, to remember one thing. To remember that what he was dying for was worth it.

As he crossed himself—_in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit_—he thought of Claire and Aaron and remembered that he didn't regret a single moment. Anything was worth getting them off the island. Anything.

Darkness closed around his mind, around his soul, a deep, cool darkness that was half-peaceful and not nearly as frightening as he thought. If this was dying, it wasn't so bad. This numbness, this place where fearing death seemed so ridiculous.

His eyes slid closed, and he thought of Claire, one last time. Claire holding Aaron. He wanted their faces to be the last image in his mind before he died. A man always thought of his family at the end.

At the very back of his mind, his mother's voice drifted into his head, and he remembered being young and watching her crying and praying because her boys were so wild and so hard to tame and so hard to protect from pain and fear.

_"Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou…"_

--&--

When he's sure she isn't looking, Charlie likes to look at Claire. Not intensely, but more of a slow study. To tilt his head to one side and study the way her pale hair drifts across her face in the firelight. To watch as she lifts a hand to rub her stomach, consoling a baby that isn't ready to behold the world yet.

If you ignore the monsters and the noises and the eerie atmosphere, the island they've landed on seems a bit like paradise, undiscovered and untouched. And Charlie supposes Claire makes a good Eve. An earthly mother, angelically beautiful but undoubtedly a child of nature.

He'll talk to her, he decides, after he studies her a bit more. She looks almost too good to be true. Too good for him, certainly, but he can't resist the idea of being able to sit with her, to talk with her, to get to know her.

Claire lifts her head and wind ruffles her hair, just a gentle breeze, and Charlie's caught up in it. The strangest thing, since he's never met her before and they're an island with a mysterious French recording over sixteen years old, but he feels like he's home after being a hundred years away.

A smile tugs his lips and if the feeling wasn't so serious he might have laughed. Because who would have thought there'd be any happiness on a deserted island out in the middle of nowhere with over half of his fellow fliers dead?

But there it is, a shining light that feels like happiness. And it's so nice, because Charlie hasn't felt like he's been happy in a long while. Maybe not since he first gave in and followed his brother's path into the world of drugs and decay.

For the first time in a while, Charlie breathes in the air and it feels fresh and pure.

--&--

He struggled against the urge. It was like a small breach on his numbness, a sharp pain against the small of his back. He knew he shouldn't, but his fingers clenched and unclenched with the need and the unbearable urge.

But he couldn't let himself open his eyes like he wanted to. He just couldn't. He had to cling to his image of Claire and Aaron instead. He didn't open his eyes, not with the world closing in around him. But Charlie opened his mouth.

And breathed in.

* * *

**notes:** why do the LOST writers keep killing off my favorite characters? I am cursed or something? 


End file.
